Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Proposal: ABSTAIN

Fails 2-9. - Qwazukee

Adminned at 11 Aug 2010 19:38:47 UTC

Change “Voting” to read:

Any Citizen may cast their Vote on a Votable Matter by making a comment to the official post that comprises that Votable Matter using a voting icon of FOR, AGAINST, DEFERENTIAL, ABSTAIN, or VETO (only if the Votable Matter is a Proposal and the Citizen is the High-Programmer).

If the Citizen who authored a Votable Matter has not cast a Vote on it, their Vote is counted as FOR. If a Citizen uses more than one Voting Icon in comments on a Votable Matter, their Vote is the last Voting Icon they use. If a Citizen leaves the game or goes Idle, their Vote is no longer valid. If a Citizen Votes against their own Proposal, that Vote may not be changed. This is referred to as a Self-Kill.

Votes of DEFERENTIAL on Votable Matters other than Proposals are counted as Votes of ABSTAIN. On a Proposal, a Vote of DEFERENTIAL is a Vote of faith in the decision of the High-Programmer, and will count as the same as the High-Programmerâ€™s Vote. If the High-Programmer casts a Vote of DEFERENTIAL on a Proposal, it is equivalent to a vote of ABSTAIN. If there is no High-Programmer, or the High-Programmer does not Vote on a Proposal, a Vote of DEFERENTIAL on that Proposal counts as a vote of ABSTAIN.

A Vote of ABSTAIN indicates a Vote of no opinion, and does not count as a Vote for any Rule other than this one. A Vote of ABSTAIN serves to cancel any previous Vote made by the Citizen casting the Vote of ABSTAIN.

Change the definition of “Voting Icons” in Rule 3.1 to read:

For use in voting, for.gif shall represent a Vote FOR, against.gif shall represent a Vote AGAINST, imperial.gif shall represent a Vote of DEFERENTIAL, open.gif shall represent a vote of ABSTAIN and seal.gif shall represent a vote of VETO.

I think I covered everything. The need for an ABSTAIN vote was brought up in the comments to this proposal.

[lilomar] Making it into a voting button is presenting it as a voting option on a par with the other buttons (rather than a thing you have to do silently, or make a serious justification of) - I think we’d definitely see some DEFs become ABSTAINs, where they wouldn’t before.

Really, quorum should be able to adapt to cover abstentions. But this really seems like more trouble than it’s worth, and I’m not sure abstentions are really that valuable in such a small voting system, where it can mean that big decisions are taken by increasingly small numbers of players.

"Nomic is a game in which changing the rules is a move. In that respect it differs from almost every other game. The primary activity of Nomic is proposing changes in the rules, debating the wisdom of changing them in that way, voting on the changes, deciding what can and cannot be done afterwards, and doing it. Even this core of the game, of course, can be changed."